Thursday, March 15, 2007

The Open Rights Group are having a party, and you're invited! There'll be public domain DJs, 'remixed visuals' (I'm not quite sure what they are, but I'm sure they'll look nice), free culture goodie bags and a special guest speaker. And it's free!
The catch? You have to bring a new ORG supporter – someone you think might like to support ORG with a monthly donation of just five pounds. So, who wants to be my plus one… or two… or three? If you can't make it on the night, then you can always sign up online – that'll do just as well!

Last Friday I had the good fortune to be invited to see Sunshine, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland's new movie, along with a bunch of other bloggers and film website reviewers. We have been asked not to officially review the film, because there are still press previews to be done and they didn't want piss off the journalists. So this isn't a review, even if it might at some points seem like one.
I had no idea what Sunshine was about before I turned up, despite the fact that I've known that Gia Milinovich was working on the official website for months and months. I hadn't even seen the trailer.

I'm not quite sure what I expected, to be honest, but what I got was a beautifully shot film. The golden colours are gorgeous, as are the shots of the sun, some of which I've been told are real. It's quite amazing to sit and watch images of the sun fill the screen in front of you, this huge enormous ball of seething fire, writhing and boiling in all its white and golden glory. That alone is breathtaking, but the contrast between the brilliance of the sun and the black coldness of space serves well to make both seem so much more fearsome.
Sunshine concerns the mission of the Icarus II, Earth's last best hope of salvation. The Sun is dying, and with it the Earth – now a hostile icy place. The Icarus I was sent seven years previously to deliver a bomb to restart the Sun, but when it fails the global community gathers together the last reserves of fissile material to create Icarus II upon which the fate of mankind rests. The eight astronauts' voyage goes well until Harvey, the ship's communications officer, hears the distress beacon from the Icarus I which is now drifting in space inside the 'dead zone' from which no signals can be sent to or received from Earth.
At this point, things all start to unravel.
One of the best bits about Sunshine, other than the fact that it's one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen, is the sound design. It's just amazing. It reminds me of how it used to feel to play bass guitar with a really good amp and speaker set-up. The bass just reverberates through you, it connects with you in a very physical way, from heel to sternum, and feeling the sound like that changes the way you hear it.
When you combine the almost overwhelmingly intense look of the film with some incredibly powerful sound design, you end up with something that is a bit like being thumped in the chest. If I'm honest, I found the tension almost too much – I'm not very good at dealing with tension in films, primarily because I'm squeamish so at any sort of a hint that there may be violence I get scared and want to hide behind a cushion. Of course, there were no cushions so I hid under my coat instead.
As for the acting, well, Cillian Murphy dominates any film he's in, if only because he has those amazingly blue eyes that just seem to bore right through me. But the whole cast of Sunshine is strong, no one really hits a bum note, and there's a great group chemistry that's often lacking from ensemble pieces. Equally, whilst Cillian's Capa – the physicist who is the only person who truly understands how the bomb works – is central, he doesn't overshadow the other characters. I particularly liked the ship's engineer, Mace, played by Chris Evans, who is possibly the only one with a clear character arc and who gets to have fun with redemption.
But if Sunshine has a flaw, it's that it doesn't really know what it's trying to be, weaving from genre to genre in a slightly unsatisfactory way. It starts of as a standard sci-fi, thence develops into disaster movie, then on to a psycho-drama, a slasher flick, a running man flick until finally the hero triumphs. There are big dollops of 2001: A Space Odessy, of Solaris, of Event Horizon (I'm told – haven't seen that one), and Alien. And there's one particular plot twist, which I'm not going to give away, that I saw coming from a mile off and which I was really disappointed they used.
When I came out of the screening room, Gia asked me what I thought, and I couldn't answer her right away. Sunshine, even with its slightly predictable plot, is a breathtaking movie. It honestly stunned me into silence, and I had to have myself a little quiet moment and a think and a sip or two of wine before I could start to speak coherently again. You see, Boyle lulls you into a false sense of security through the first act, but once the first turning point is reached, he never lets up, building the tension all the way through until the climax comes and when it does you're left feeling winded, all the air knocked out of you.
I said to Gia on Friday that Sunshine wasn't a film that I'd want to go back and see again, but now a little time has passed and I've had the chance to reflect, I can't wait for it to open in the cinema so I can go back and watch it a second time round. Films like this I tend to get more out of on a second viewing, because I know what's coming so I can enjoy myself instead of hide under my jacket.
So, go see Sunshine. It's just like The Weather Project on steroids.

Queen of the May

Every year, on May Day, a young woman is stolen away by the faeries to become their Queen for a year. This year, though, the faeries have bitten off more than they can chew. Shakti Nayar will do whatever it takes to get her own life as a botanist back. As she struggles to work out how to get home, she uncovers Faerie’s dark secret and finds that she is not the only human who needs saving.

The Lacemaker

All the threads looked the same to the innocent eye, but Maude could see the black heart running up through one strand as it wove its way through the lace roundel. She busied herself with tidying her bobbins as a customer browsed the lace mats on her stall.

“I’ll take this one,” the woman said, holding up a square piece, twelve inches across. Maude winced, picked up the piece she had just completed and held it out to the woman for her consideration.

Argleton

Matt is fascinated by the story of Argleton, the unreal town that appeared on GeoMaps but which doesn’t actually exist. When he and his friend and flatmate Charlie are standing at the exact longitude and latitude that defines Argleton, Matt sets in motion a chain of events that will take him places he didn’t know existed… and which perhaps don’t.

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A Passion for Science

From the identification of the Horsehead Nebula to the creation of the computer program, from the development of in vitro fertilisation to the detection of pulsars, A Passion for Science: Stories of Discovery and Invention brings together inspiring stories of how we achieved some of the most important breakthroughs in science and technology.